Building adaptive Capacity in the informal settlements of maputo - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 30

it is clear that it exists in tension with the formal system, and that ideas of
governance and power in Maputo would be oversimplified through exclusive
reference to the formal processes.
There are also inter- and non-governmental groups represented in Maputo.
UN Habitat, working through the Cities and Climate Change Initiative
(CCCI), has been supporting the development of an adaptation plan for the
city. Priority has gone to adaptation planning, identifying the available legal
tools, commissioning a pilot project, and locating vulnerable sectors and areas.
Events within the city have sought to draw in the perspective of local leaders,
but these reflect the structures outlined above. 5 Similarly, the National Disaster
Management Institute (Instituto Nacional de Gestão de Calamidades, INGC)
has worked to establish Community Emergency Response Committees, but
these are constituted of local leaders who include the Secretário do Bairro and chefes
de quarteirões. Finally, the Italian NGO Avsi is working on behalf of the municipal
council to produce a plan for the upgrading of drains, roads, water and lighting
in Chamanculo C. While not currently integrating climate-change issues, their
approach gathers data at the household level. 6 This is the initial phase of their
'integrated requalification' approach that seeks to bring together the physical
and socio-economic challenges facing the communities in the bairro , prior to the
development of plans.
The consequences of these arrangements for adaptive capacity are mixed.
Overall, from a resilience perspective, the development challenge lies in
identifying or opening spaces in which cross-scale relationships can be
developed and power shared between this multiplicity of urban actors, many
of whom reside in the informal settlements with little voice or influence in
the established patterns of governance. The top-down control exercised by
Frelimo, in particular the control exerted by the chefes de quarteirões, is likely
to act as a brake on community voices entering into decision-making, and
the régulos system is at best an imperfect mechanism through which sections
of the community are able to assert their views. However, a shift to a
governance arrangement which could incorporate a greater diversity of voices
and opportunities to learn from experiments outside the bairro is likely to be
challenging, as perhaps reflected in Avsi's cautious approach to integrating
communities into the planning process. A final challenge lies in the need
for the government to recognize the validity of local interests: as one local
academic stated during an interview, 'rainfall inundation and lack of formal
drains are the problem in the informal settlements, and the government must
shift from thinking about their population as illegal'. 7 The outlook for these
communities in the face of climate change will remain poor as long as those in
authority continue to overlook their responsibility for essential services, citing
the 'illegality' of the settlements.